Exhaust Installed

I decided to skip the prop installation for now. I feel that the pitot tube can be installed later and I don't want to pump into the prop and nick it during the ongoing installation of more bulky and/or heavy stuff.
So I jumped ahead to the exhaust installation.

Learning from Dave's experience that he disassembled the exhaust and then had a hard time to determine which part was going where on the engine, I decided to put some stickers on the parts that show the number of the cylinder they should get attached to.

That did indeed help to get the pipes attached to the engine.

Now the muffler was ready to get installed and reconnected to the 4 exhaust pipes, after applying a thin coat of anti-seize to the ball joints.

As I still don't have an assistant mechanic working with me and helping when help is dearly needed, I had to come up with an idea how to temporarily secure the muffler while connecting the springs to hold the thing in place. As I am still not very familiar with safety wire I chose tie-wraps instead.

One tie-wrap on each pipe held the muffler securely in place and gave me two hands to attach those springs. Once one spring was on, I cut the tie-wrap and added the second one.

I installed the EGT temperature sensors (of which I forgot to take a photo) and that concluded section 48. The only oddball was the hole in the exhaust pipes for the sensor is a bit too small. I measured it and then decided to tap the holes with a #30 bit which is exactly the diameter of the EGT probe.
This section took me just 2 hours to complete, so I moved on to continue with the installation of the Cooling System, section 49.

It starts with a real ordeal and I couldn't find a lot of advice in Dave's blog either. The task is to install some springs in rubber cooling hoses.
It is pretty easy to get the springs in up to this point:

After an hour of fighting with pliers, hex sockets and other tools that didn't help, I determined that excessive friction is the main problem in this situation. I decided to grease the inside of the hose and try again to push the spring in with an aluminum tube to give it the 1" setback required.

This chain saw oil is a pretty benign oil that should also come out fairly easy and not harm the rubber in any way.
And, yes, this made all the difference. All of a sudden, positioning the spring inside the hose became a fairly simple task. Washing out the oil thereafter took a while but Dawn did its usual great job and removed most of that oil.

Now the next problem was the length of the spring in the short hose. I cut this to 20" of length as requested and the spring did not allow me to push it to the 1" setback without protruding on the opposite end of the hose. I had to pull out quite a bit of spring and cut it off. Would have been easier had Van's made me aware of this BEFORE inserting it into the hose.

I tried to keep the spring as long as possible that's why you see two pieces in the picture. This is what I had to cut off to come up with a perfect 1" setback on both ends of the hose.

After this major but hard earned victory I decided to complete one more task in this section, installing the heater door.
The materials are much tougher than what I am used to on this door assembly. Most of the parts are made from stainless steel and that sure is more challenging to work with than aluminum.
Cutting the hinge and the pin to length and shape was the first step.

Then the door holes were dimpled and the hinge's back was countersunk, which was pretty hard to do. It is amazing how easy it actually is to counterisnk a hole in aluminum compared to stainless steel.

The door and hinge were riveted together.

And another episode of match-drilling a hinge piece, this time to the outer door frame.

And then finally, it was rivet time. Beware, the holes in the hinge take different rivets than the rest of the frame piece. The hinge wants MSP42 and the rest gets the usual LP4-3.

Then upper and lower brackets get riveted on, with usual LP4-3, and the door gets installed with the help of the hinge pin.

That's when I decided to call it a day to attend some other priorities next to building an airplane.
Expect more installation of the cooling system over the next days...